This chapter addresses how plebeian citizens might prevent their second-class political status from altogether darkening the experience of their lives. Drawing on Homer, Herodotus, Plato, and ...
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This chapter addresses how plebeian citizens might prevent their second-class political status from altogether darkening the experience of their lives. Drawing on Homer, Herodotus, Plato, and Epicurus, among others, it recovers an ancient, though largely forgotten, democratic tradition which associates the egalitarian mindset with the tendency periodically not to care about politics—both in the sense of criticizing political life as disrespectful of human equality and in the sense of celebrating certain practices that draw on political ideals even as these are deployed in a non-political direction. For plebeians, whose relationship to liberal democracy is an ongoing source of consternation, such critical indifference has the potential to provide a distinctly democratic kind of solace: a partial shield, constructed from egalitarian materials, against the psychological strains of plebeian political life. The chapter concludes by defending the contemporary relevance of this kind of solace against the charge that it is civically irresponsible.Less

Solace for the Plebeian : The Idea of Extrapoliticism

Jeffrey Edward Green

Published in print: 2016-08-01

This chapter addresses how plebeian citizens might prevent their second-class political status from altogether darkening the experience of their lives. Drawing on Homer, Herodotus, Plato, and Epicurus, among others, it recovers an ancient, though largely forgotten, democratic tradition which associates the egalitarian mindset with the tendency periodically not to care about politics—both in the sense of criticizing political life as disrespectful of human equality and in the sense of celebrating certain practices that draw on political ideals even as these are deployed in a non-political direction. For plebeians, whose relationship to liberal democracy is an ongoing source of consternation, such critical indifference has the potential to provide a distinctly democratic kind of solace: a partial shield, constructed from egalitarian materials, against the psychological strains of plebeian political life. The chapter concludes by defending the contemporary relevance of this kind of solace against the charge that it is civically irresponsible.